This pioneering book reveals how the music classroom can draw upon the world of popular musicians' informal learning practices, so as to recognize and foster a range of musical skills and knowledge ...that have long been overlooked within music education. It investigates how far informal learning practices are possible and desirable in a classroom context; how they can affect young teenagers' musical skill and knowledge acquisition; and how they can change the ways students listen to, understand and appreciate music as critical listeners, not only in relation to what they already know, but beyond. It examines students' motivations towards music education, their autonomy as learners, and their capacity to work co-operatively in groups without instructional guidance from teachers. It suggests how we can awaken students' awareness of their own musicality, particularly those who might not otherwise be reached by music education, putting the potential for musical development and participation into their own hands. Bringing informal learning practices into a school environment is challenging for teachers. It can appear to conflict with their views of professionalism, and may at times seem to run against official educational discourses, pedagogic methods and curricular requirements. But any conflict is more apparent than real, for this book shows how informal learning practices can introduce fresh, constructive ways for music teachers to understand and approach their work. It offers a critical pedagogy for music, not as mere theory, but as an analytical account of practices which have fundamentally influenced the perspectives of the teachers involved. Through its grounded examples and discussions of alternative approaches to classroom work and classroom relations, the book reaches out beyond music to other curriculum subjects, and wider debates about pedagogy and curriculum.
Contents: Introduction; The project's pedagogy and curriculum content; Making music; Listening and appreciation; Enjoyment: making music and having autonomy; Group cooperation, ability and inclusion; Informal learning with classical music; Afterword; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.
Lucy Green is Professor of Music Education in The Institute of Education, University of London, UK.
Black Music Matters: Jazz and the Transformation of Music Studies is among the first books to examine music studies reform through the lens of African American music, as well as the emergent field of ...consciousness studies. It is inspired by conversations on race and a rich body of literature on the place of black music in American culture.
Brilliant... important reading for those who teach music, who write the curricular plans for teaching it, and who guide prospective teachers to the profession... It is a must-read, for it awakens ...thoughts about why we teach and how. -- Patricia Shehan Campbell This quintet of essays examines the reasons why music education should be transformed, investigates the nature of education and musical transformation, and suggests alternative educational models and strategies. Estelle Jorgensen frames her argument for new approaches against the backdrop of historical musical and educational practice and draws on literature from various fields. Transforming Music Education is addressed to current and future music teachers, those who train them, and all who are interested in revolutionizing music education.
Critical of technologically determinist assumptions underpinning current educational policy, Victoria Armstrong argues that this growing technicism has grave implications for the music classroom ...where composition is often synonymous with the music technology suite. The use of computers and associated compositional software in music education is frequently decontextualized from cultural and social relationships, thereby ignoring the fact that new technologies are used and developed within existing social spaces that are always already delineated along gender lines. Armstrong suggests these gender-technology relations have a profound effect on the ways adolescents compose music as well as how gendered identities in the technologized music classroom are constructed. Drawing together perspectives from the sociology of science and technology studies (STS) and the sociology of music, Armstrong examines the gendered processes and practices that contribute to how students learn about technology, the repertoire of teacher and student talk, its effect on student confidence and the issue of male control of technological knowledge. Even though girls and female teachers have technological knowledge and skill, the continuing material and symbolic associations of technology with men and masculinity contribute to the perception of women as less able and less interested in all things technological. In light of the fact that music technology is now central to many music-making practices across all sectors of education from primary, secondary through to higher education, this book provides a timely critical analysis that powerfully demonstrates why the relationship between gender and music technology should remain an important empirical consideration.
Musical identity raises complex, multifarious, and fascinating questions.
Discussions in this new study consider how individuals construct their musical
identities in relation to their experiences of ...formal and informal music teaching
and learning. Each chapter features a different case study situated in a specific
national or local socio-musical context, spanning 20 regions across the world.
Subjects range from Ghanaian or Balinese villagers, festival-goers in Lapland, and
children in a South African township to North American and British students, adults
and children in a Cretan brass band, and Gujerati barbers in the Indian
diaspora.
Music in video games is often a sophisticated, complex composition that serves to engage the player, set the pace of play, and aid interactivity. Composers of video game music must master an array of ...specialized skills not taught in the conservatory, including the creation of linear loops, music chunks for horizontal resequencing, and compositional fragments for use within a generative framework. InA Composer's Guide to Game Music, Winifred Phillips -- herself an award-winning composer of video game music -- provides a comprehensive, practical guide that leads an aspiring video game composer from acquiring the necessary creative skills to understanding the function of music in games to finding work in the field. Musicians and composers may be drawn to game music composition because the game industry is a multibillion-dollar, employment-generating economic powerhouse, but, Phillips writes, the most important qualification for a musician who wants to become a game music composer is a love of video games. Phillips offers detailed coverage of essential topics, including musicianship and composition experience; immersion; musical themes; music and game genres; workflow; working with a development team; linear music; interactive music, both rendered and generative; audio technology, from mixers and preamps to software; and running a business.A Composer's Guide to Game Musicoffers indispensable guidance for musicians and composers who want to deploy their creativity in a dynamic and growing industry, protect their musical identities while working in a highly technical field, and create great music within the constraints of a new medium.
What were the methods and educational philosophies of music teachers in
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance? What did students study? What were the
motivations of teacher and student? Contributors to ...this volume address these topics
and other -- including gender, social status, and the role of the Church -- to
better understand the identities of music teachers and students from 650 to 1650 in
Western Europe. This volume provides an expansive view of the beginnings of music
pedagogy, and shows how the act of learning was embedded in the broader context of
the early Western art music tradition.
Drawing on a mix of collaborative autoethnography, secondary literature, interviews with leading improvisers, and personal anecdotal material, Jamming the Classroom discusses the pedagogy of musical ...improvisation as a vehicle for teaching, learning, and enacting social justice. Heble and Stewart write that to “jam the classroom” is to argue for a renewed understanding of improvisation as both a musical and a social practice; to activate the knowledge and resources associated with improvisational practices in an expression of noncompliance with dominant orders of knowledge production; and to recognize in the musical practices of aggrieved communities something far from the reaches of conventional forms of institutionalized power, yet something equally powerful, urgent, and expansive. With this definition of jamming the classroom in mind, Heble and Stewart argue that even as improvisation gains recognition within mainstream institutions (including classrooms in universities), it needs to be understood as a critique of dominant institutionalized assumptions and epistemic orders. Suggesting a closer consideration of why musical improvisation has been largely expunged from dominant models of pedagogical inquiry in both classrooms and communities, this book asks what it means to theorize the pedagogy of improvised music in relation to public programs of action, debate, and critical practice.
This book compares, from a historical and sociopolitical perspective, the respective systems and contents of music education in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in response to globalization, ...localization and Sinificiation, with particular reference to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei.
